Faith No More — We Care a Lot

JUL 01 1988 · 12:00

Faith No More — We Care a Lot (1988) Director: Bob Biggs & Jay Brown Era: Late Reagan-Era Alternative Underground (1987–1988) - Post-punk/funk-metal crossover moment preceding mainstream alternative rock breakout; Slash Records indie-to-major pipeline era Exceptionally high. This is the first music video produced by Faith No More and serves as a foundational document of the funk-metal and rap-rock genres. Co-directed by the founder of Slash Records, it fuses indie art-world sensibility with rap-video aesthetics in a manner unprecedented in rock video production at the time. Its moderate MTV airplay marks it as a pre-breakout artifact of one of alternative rock's most important bands, making it essential for any archive of late-1980s alternative music visual culture. Context: Released January 18, 1988, as Faith No More's debut single on Slash/Warner Bros. Records, 'We Care a Lot' is a sardonic takedown of the celebrity-charity spectacle of the mid-1980s, lampooning Live Aid, the LAPD, the US military, and pop-culture artifacts like the Garbage Pail Kids and Transformers. Keyboardist Roddy Bottum cited Kraftwerk, Soulsonic Force, and Run-D.M.C. as key influences, making the track an early and documented instance of rap-over-rock fusion—what vocalist Chuck Mosley claimed was the first rap-rock song. Recorded during the height of the Reagan era, the song was later cited by PopMatters as one of 65 great protest songs, described as a 'smirking account of everything that pop and political culture shoved down our throats at the height of the Reagan revolution.' The video, co-directed by Slash Records founder Bob Biggs—himself a visual artist—brought an art-damage sensibility to a format then dominated by glam metal excess. Director notes: This was the first music video ever produced for a Faith No More song, released as a single on January 18, 1988, tied to the re-recorded version of the song from Introduce Yourself (1987) on Slash/Warner Bros. Records. Biggs co-directed the video in his dual role as Slash Records founder and visual artist. The video received moderate airplay on MTV and established Faith No More's reputation for surreal and unexpected imagery. Noted visual elements include a bouncing baby and a flying dog, described by fan sources as emblematic of the band's irreverent, anti-establishment visual language. The video pays homage to contemporary rap culture through bright colors and direct-address performance staging.